Chuck Lorre, prolific comedy producer best known for “The Big Bang Theory,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Mike and Molly” and “Mom,” is prepping a Colorado-set pop comedy, The Hollywood Reporter posted today.

Co-written by Lorre and David Javerbaum (“The Daily Show”) the spec script for the as yet untitled half-hour is set at a legal marijuana dispensary in Colorado, THR reported.

The ensemble revolves around a group of potheads.

“Pot comedies have been in high demand across broadcast, cable, premium and streaming outlets,” the magazine noted.

Amazon recently tapped Margaret Cho to star in pot comedy “Highland”; HBO picked up six episodes of the popular web series “High Maintenance” and NBC is teaming with Adam and Naomi Scott to develop “Buds,” set in Denver.

line forms outside the Cannabis Club on Main Street in Breckenridge on Jan. 1, 2014, the first day of recreational marijuana sales in Colorado. (Kathryn Scott Osler, Denver Post file)

Someday this will be a case study in business schools: the creation of a marijuana franchise starting with a lone store in a cute Victorian house on Main Street in Breckenridge. For viewers beyond Colorado, “High Profits” on CNN, an eight-part docu-series premiering April 19, may seem an outrageous curiosity. For locals accustomed to media scrutiny of the state’s legalized recreational weed industry, it’s just one more reality TV effort, hyped for suspense.

Brian Rogers and Caitlin McGuire the marijuana moguls who succeeded beyond their dreams by being early and betting on medical weed leading to recreational sales, come across as sincere, dedicated business people. Now in Steamboat Springs and Crested Butte as well as Breck (although exiled from Main Street), the business is booming.

CNN’s “High Profits”

Long lines outside the dispensary, piles and piles of cash inside, long shots of a vast grow house, local and national media tripping over each other to get the story, and town council debates about the propriety of marijuana in the tourist haven of Main Street…it’s all here. Locals have followed the story for years, starting well before Jan. 1, 2014, and legalization. Now it’s crafted into a suspenseful narrative by CNN with added silliness and humanizing elements — let’s watch a store manager get a tattoo! let’s see BCC co-owner McGuire bond with her mother and Rogers at home with their dog…

BCC co-owner Brian Rogers, photo provided by CNN.

The green rush continues. The upside potential for franchises is great, but there is equally great risk since weed remains illegal on the federal level. (See Forbes’ list of red flags for potential pot entrepreneurs.)

The Colorado weed story is obviously rich, and has been covered by all manner of news and documentary crews. But whether it’s deep enough to merit an extended series on the order of Anthony Bourdain’s smart “Parts Unknown” franchise for CNN is doubtful.

Comments Off on CNN’s “High Profits” tracks Breckenridge Cannabis Club

Hick notes he wasn’t happy about the vote at the time. “No. I opposed it…and I think even after the election, if I’d had a magic wand and I could wave the wand, I probably would’ve reversed it and had the initiative fail,” he tells Whitaker. “But now I look at it…and I think we’ve made a lot of progress…still a lot of work to be done. But I think we might actually create a system that can work.”

He discusses the problems encountered in the first year of legalization, including the security mess for all-cash businesses. “If you want to guarantee a fledgling industry becomes corrupt…make it all cash, right. That’s as old as Al Capone, right. Cash creates corruption,” he says.

Per the CBS release, Whitaker takes 60 MINUTES cameras inside a food and wine event for young professionals where everything is infused with marijuana, tours a marijuana factory with one of the state’s leading cannabis CEOs, and interviews weed czar Andrew Freedman.

Freedman observes the still squishy nature of the laws: “It’s completely possible that in a few years, somebody comes around and says – a new president says — ‘We’re not OK with you doing this.’”

This week, at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, Al Jazeera America examines “A Year on Pot,” including a day in the life of Denver Post editors and reporters on The Cannabist team. The documentary is one of a growing stash of films chronicling Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana one year ago.

On the scale of recent journalistic explorations by CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and others, this Al Jazeera “America Tonight” effort is more critical of the state’s shift and more interested in warning of potential dangers. The Wednesday night segment in particular focuses on THC-poisoning from edibles, the rise of dabbing and resulting burns, underage weed abuse and driving under the influence. The film also makes do with lower production values.

Harry Smith returns to his Colorado stomping grounds to explore “Marijuana Country: The Cannabis Boom” on CNBC, a one-hour documentary sizing up the state one year after legalization.

Smith covers pot as a treatment for seizures in children (“Charlotte’s Web”), the trouble with dosing edibles, the problem of enforcing zero tolerance in the workplace, the black market, the big businesses hoping to franchise, and sales stats in general — all with a critical eye.

Most of these topics have been chronicled extensively by local and national media (The Cannabist reports 9 percent of the state’s population can be considered regular users and counts $573 million in pot sales for 10 months of 2014), but the attention to underground sales is insightful. Those making deals without legal sanctions call it “donating” and “caregiving,” not buying and selling, Smith notes. Those who choose to avoid dispensaries and call a dealer, er, “caregiver,” spend about one-third the cost of legal recreational weed.

An outsider taking a peek might conclude there has been no disaster, none of the predicted chaos, in Colorado since legalization. The state seems to be finding its way. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper tells CNBC, “When you’re doing this for the first time, there’s no template.”

Like much about the marijuana experiment in Colorado, the caliber of TV reporting on the subject has matured over the past year. Sure, the latest documentary includes images of smoke-filled Civic Center Park and celebrants hooting at a 4/20 fest. But it also features a high-powered lunch at The Palm with gangapreneurs making deals. Since legalization brought international media to the state a year ago, the quality of coverage of the upstart industry has improved.

No longer confined to quick hits filled with pot puns, shots of leafy plants, thick buds and mountains of cash, the latest pot documentary, “Pot Barons of Colorado” on MSNBC airing Sunday nights (with a sneak peak on Nov. 28), probes the financials in a new way.

Because legalized recreational marijuana has created a boom not only in the weed industry but in the weed TV documentary (or pot-doc) industry, another six-parter is coming our way this month. MSNBC premieres “Pot Barons of Colorado” on Sunday, Nov. 30 at 8 p.m. (A “sneak peak” airs Nov. 28 at 10 p.m.)

This pot-umentary follows Colorado-based entrepreneurs who are cashing in on the “green rush.”

The names are by now familiar: Jamie Perino, owner of Euflora; Andy and Pete Williams, owners of Medicine Man, one of the largest single-store marijuana dispensaries in the world; and Tripp Keber of Dixie Elixirs, a marijuana soda that comes in fancy brushed-aluminum bottles.

Their plans for franchises and empire building are explored, along with the dangers of the cash-only business (picture footage of armed security guards and piles of bills). The series was produced by MSNBC’s Long Form Unit and Triple Threat TV.

National Geographic Channel is hardly the first to chronicle Colorado’s marijuana legalization and ensuing political, business and cultural fallout. But their series’ focus is crime, narcotics and gangs. “Rocky Mountain High,” an episode of the series “Drugs Inc.,” will air at 7 p.m. locally on Sept. 15. And the picture is not pretty.

The hour opens with the party scene in Denver’s Civic Center Park on April 20, “the largest smoke-out in the country.” The happy festival is interrupted by gunshots, the camera catches the panic, the background music turns menacing, the voice-over is grim. This, we are told, is what pot leads to: Gang warfare.

The “green rush,” the emerging pot tourism industry, the 5,000 employees in Denver’s “weed business,” it’s all noted in the hour by executive producer Jonathan Hewes (“Man on Wire”). But that’s not all. “Pager dope” (ordered by phone, higher quality than what’s on the street) in Denver operates much like pizza delivery, we’re told. The availability of legal pot in Denver is putting a dent in the sale of cheap Mexican “brick weed.” So, the Mexican drug gangs are actively pushing heroin into Denver.

To illustrate the idea that pot legalization is “adding fuel to the fire of old gang rivalries,” Park Hill is isolated on a graphic map. The Crips and Bloods are introduced with YouTube videos and disguised/distorted voices. A white-board full of the names of “dead homies” is displayed on camera. Gang-bangers have been squeezed out of the pot trade by the legal pot business, the documentary states and have graduated to harder drugs. “Ghost,” one of the biggest drug wholesalers in Denver, is depicted working out of “a wealthy suburb,” far from the hood. He and his lieutenant pack cocaine on top of a washing machine.

In some of the most dramatic scenes, Denver Police allow the film crew to tag along as they target open-air drug markets downtown, where buying and selling of crack cocaine goes on in full view. The producer makes his case: Inter-cutting scenes of heroin sales with visiting potheads on their tour bus makes the link. It’s a loaded argument. The goal here isn’t a balanced discussion of the impact of the legalization of pot, much less an overview like Sanjay Gupta offered on CNN recently about the medical benefits of the drug.

Throughout the hour, one question nags: couldn’t anyone who knows these folks recognize them behind the little bandanas, under the hoodies and caps?

Central to the documentary “Weed,” by Sanjay Gupta, is the story of a young Colorado girl, Charlotte Figi, who nearly died without access to medical marijuana. Colorado and Charlotte figure prominently throughout the compelling round-the-world documentary premiering Sunday at 6 p.m. on CNN.

“When the smoke clears, is marijuana bad for you?” Gupta asks. “Or could pot actually be good for you?” Beautiful shots of the Colorado mountains and random scenes of plentiful pot shops around Denver accent the piece. You’ll recognize the signs. This is where marijuana is sold legally, smoked openly in clubs and at festivals, he notes. The probing report ultimately concludes that “Americans were systematically misled” on the subject of pot.

Charlotte, who suffers an extreme form of epilepsy, had run out of options. “She had tried everything, except cannabis,” physician Alan Shackleford says.

“This isn’t go to the pharmacy and pick up your medicine. There was no protocol,” Charlotte’s mother says.

Off to Teller County to see the Stanley brothers, some of Colorado’s biggest growers and dispensary owners, at an undisclosed mountain location…and welcome to the “Garden of Eden,” where medical marijuana is being manufactured. (The brothers were also featured in a National Geographic documentary last year.)

It’s a long, strange and touching journey, and one that led Gupta to apologize for his part in misleading the public. He wrote in a CNN editorial this week, “there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.”

Denver’s thriving medical marijuana industry is the focus of a “60 Minutes” story by Steve Kroft this week, Sunday at 6 p.m. on Channel 4. The topic, already well covered by local media and national cable and broadcast networks, now gets the “60 Minutes” treatment.

With the pot-legalization measure on the ballot for November, and with “pot tourism dollars” at issue, Kroft notes that while the businesses have created jobs and helped the economy, they’re still against federal law.

Kroft and his producers did a round of interviews in Denver in April and have returned several times. The camera lingers on various shops and visits marijuana products firm Dixie Elixirs.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.